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AMD Radeon R9 295X2 and 290X Tri Fire Reviews

Final8y

Final8y

Final8y

Soldato
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Digitalstorm
Everyone knows that multiple-GPU scaling in the past has been horrendous. However, a long time has passed so we decided to put the latest drivers to the test. For our benchmarks, we got the new R9 295X2 and CrossFire'd it together with the R9 290X to see just how well the cards scaled.

Being that the R9 295X2 is a dual-GPU card and the R9 290X is a single-GPU card, we expected there to be some driver issues. To our surprise, however, the three GPUs ran together flawlessly.

The test bench consisted of an Intel 4960X running at 4.6Ghz on an ASUS Maximus Extreme Black motherboard. We also used 32B of Corsair Dominator Platinum memory running at 1866MHz and a 500GB Velociraptor drive. Under load, the system was pulling about 1097 watts from the wall measured using a kill-a-watt.
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http://www.digitalstormonline.com/u...-crossfire-review-multi-gpu-scaling-idnum251/

Hardocp
Introduction

This review sits atop two previous articles; the first is our AMD Radeon R9 295X2 Video Card Review. The AMD R9 295X2 video card was announced on April 8th, 2014 and has an MSRP of $1,499. This dual-GPU video card on a single PCB sports two fully speced R9 290X GPUs running at 1018MHz each. This video card employs a liquid cooling setup for fast and silent operation. Our performance results proved that this card has what it takes to enjoy Eyefinity gaming.

The second is our video card evaluation covering AMD Radeon R9 295X2 CrossFire. This is full Quad-GPU performance known as QuadFire. Our performance proved that this is the fastest setup on the planet, and gave us performance at 4K we've never experienced before. However, there was one major drawback; power usage requirements are insanely high and expensive to make this kind of a setup work.

In this third article we are seeing if you can plug in a single-GPU Radeon R9 290X video card alongside the Radeon R9 295X2 to give us triple-GPU, "TriFire" performance.

Setting up TriFire

We got a lot of feedback from our QuadFire evaluation, and one of the most asked questions was can you put a single Radeon R9 290X video card with the R9 295X2 and get TriFire performance?

TriFire is an important and highly feasible video card combination that AMD does support. It allows one to get better performance over a single R9 295X2 without having to spend the $3,000 it costs to own two R9 295X2 video cards. Prices on R9 290X video cards has dropped recently. This XFX R9 290X DD video card we are using today is $594.33 currently with Prime Shipping. This price has gone up $30 in the last few days. That makes the price of this TriFire combination around $2,100.

Setting up TriFire in this configuration was even easier than QuadFire because of the more tame power requirements. We did not have to utilize a second PSU this time. In fact, our Enermax MAXRevo 1350W PSU performed just fine with a Radeon R9 295X2 and XFX R9 290X DD video card plugged in. We were able to properly separate the 12V rails, amperage and wattage were not a problem.
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http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/05/13/amd_radeon_r9_295x2_xfx_290x_dd_trifire_review

cyclone3d said:
On top of this, in the first part, you say that tri-fire is not playable with 4xaa, and drop it down to 2xaa.

Yet, it the Apples to Apples graph, it shows tri-fire outperforming the quadfire setup.
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Brent_Justice said:
By 3 FPS AVG, which doesn't mean anything in these erratic and inconsistent multiplayer run-throughs. Keep in mind all run-throughs are different as its multiplayer.

The game felt choppy and more laggy during certain situations while playing the level. It's not something I can unfortunately display in a graph. You'd have to sit down and play it to feel what I feel, it just was close to being playable, but there were too many times during the level that the framerate dropped to unplayable levels. Tanks exploding, fires burning with lots of smoke, moving around certain things in the game with certain effects dropped the framerate too low at 4X MSAA with TriFire. QuadFire however, had the performance to push through those problems.
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http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1818643


Could use a R290 as well.
 
I am so Jealous of that guys name... "Brent Justice" - I wonder how much it costs to change your name via Deed poll :p

Great stuff that you can use a 290 alongside a 295X2. One of the pluses for AMD in my book :cool:
 
I'll stick with the peasant option :)

Greg, any time you feel like lending me your monitor...

DgJFxPX.jpg.png
Wouldn't mind seeing how those 8Gb 290's do in trifire @4k.
 
I really can not understand what Hardocp are doing reviewing these cards on the system they are using. In BF4 with 4K maxed 3 or 4 Hawaii chips totally annihilate the figures they are getting. Also using X79 there is no bottleneck when using 4 Hawaii chips on BF4.:confused:
 
Gregster Deed poll its like 70 pounds if i remember when i changed my middle one to ZEED
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Those 295z are nice shame no option of connecting that in custom loop tho :P
 
Final8y thats not the point. Why would one need to buy separate block for card that alrd got one on!!!!
 
Lord_ZED said:
Final8y thats not the point. Why would one need to buy separate block for card that alrd got one on!!!!
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Something like the ROG POSEIDON just would not work as then it would have to be able to cope with just air cooling as well which would bring down the minimum out of the box sustainable performance level.
 
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